I’m trying to decode it myself, from the legal standpoint of the effect of the Dred Scott decision. I still have Fehrenbach’s book on the nightstand, but it will have to wait for me to finish a dual biography of Jefferson & Hamilton, and maybe the Anti-Federalist papers.
But I think it goes like this:
1. The SCOTUS has found the existence of a fundamental property right to own blacks as slaves, who can never be citizens. That property right has now been cloaked with a Constitutional protection under the 5th Amendment;
2. Because there is a fundamental right to slaves as property, Congress cannot abolish that right through legislation, and therefore cannot ban slavery in any territory under its jurisdiction (which would perpetually include the District of Columbia);
3. Slaves, as property, cannot be taken from their owners by Congress through emancipation without triggering the 5th Amendment’s Takings and Due Process Clauses;
4. It is upon this supposition that the convention is claiming that the Dred Scott decision has ended popular soveriegnty, and that despite the wishes of the people, slaveowners can and always will own slaves;
5. BUT; the people at the convention are forgetting the SCOTUS case of Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore, decided 20 years earlier, which held that the 5th Amendment Takings Clause DOES NOT apply to the states, only to the Federal government;
6. This seems implicit in Taney’s opinion, where he did not declare slavery legal everywhere; instead, it was only a limit on Congress, not upon individual states who still had a right to declare slavery illegal;
7. So based upon that decision, in the territory of Kansas, as well as all Territories, slavery is legal. However, once Kansas or any other Territory becomes a state, there is nothing to prevent the STATE from abolishing slavery within its jurisdiction;
8. As the 5th Amendment Takings Clause does not apply to the states, the slaveowners would have no recourse under Federal Law to seek compensation from the state for the loss of their slaves, it would be a matter of state constitutional law.
And that, right now, is kind of where I’m at.
Seems to me, the core essence of Dred-Scott was that slave-holders could take their "property" anywhere in the US, regardless of state laws opposing slavery.
This implied, for example, that slave-holders with work-gangs of slaves could take them to a northern factory, take over the jobs of free-labor there and free-labor would have no recourse to the courts.
You disagree?